Cakewalk & Audigy

  • Thread starter Thread starter Pedullist
  • Start date Start date
Pedullist

Pedullist

Stop it, I can't breathe
Hi, any Creative Audigy users around here? If so, anyone familiar with the following problem?

The Audigy has two soundfont synths, Synth A and Synth B. In HomeStudio2002, I have assigned all of the midichannels (Synth A 1/16 and Synth B 1/16) to SoundFont Device. So with every midichannel I can choose Soundfont Device 1 or 2. When I choose SoundFont Device 1 everthing works fine but when I choose Soundfont Device 2 it LOOKS good (I see correct banks and patches). But I hear nothing! Only when I switch to Device 1, I can hear the soundfont...

Also, with the WDM-drivers I can't get the latency lower than 100ms (although the card was advertised as a 2ms latencycard).

Any suggestions?

By the way, I'm using WindowsXP....
 
Is the second synth selected as an output port in Options/Midi Devices. ??

cheers
john
 
Yes, it is...

By the way, happy newyear John!
 
Thanks Mate - same to you - I can't think of anything else it could be.:)

cheers
john
 
Audigy Synth "B"

This problem is due to the way the Audigy loads SoundFonts. Not only can you load the "A" and "B" synths separately, you must load them both in separate steps. Unfortunately, Cakewalk and Sonar do not load the Audigy's "B" synth when you attach SoundFonts.

The good news is there's a way around this problem, and I just wrote an article for ProRec (www.prorec.com) explaining how. The bad news is ProRec's editor hasn't yet posted the article. :(

The short story is you need to load your SoundFonts manually into both synths outside of Sonar / Cakewalk. If you load them all into Bank 0 Sonar will leave them alone. And you won't have to attach them to use them.
 
There you go mate - no I don't have an audigy - I was pissed off when I realised they only play back 24bit but won't record it.:):)

cheers
John
 
WDM drivers?

Thanks Ethan, I hope Prorec will post the article soon...

Do you have any ideas on the latency problem with the WDM drivers (perhaps I need to change buffer settings)?
 
WDM Drivers

Pedullist,

> I hope Prorec will post the article soon... <

Yeah, me too. If you want to hurry things up, go over there and post a public message to the effect" I heard there's going to be a new article about SoundFonts and Sonar..." Maybe that will get Rip Rowan (ProRec editor) off his duff.

> Do you have any ideas on the latency problem with the WDM drivers (perhaps I need to change buffer settings)? <

Yes, one thought: Look in the aud.ini file for either "MME" or "WDM." At least I assume HomeStudio uses the same name for that file as does Sonar. If you see MME but not WDM, that means HS is using the older MME drivers.

I have seen Sonar not use WDM drivers even when they are available. No matter how many times I ran Sonar's Wave Profiler, it kept coming up with MME. So I renamed aud.ini to aud.ini.bak, which effectively erased it from Sonar's perspective. Then when I ran Sonar it thought it was just installed, and correctly found the WDM drivers. This has worked for me twice so far, so it's worth a try.

--Ethan
 
I've checked this: my setup of HomeStudio is using the WDM-drivers.

With the WDM drivers Cakewalk's WaveProfiler changes the Buffers In Playback Queue to 2 and the effective latency changes to 100ms. This works fine. However, when pull the slider to 50ms, HomeStudio is starting to get very instable: I get hiccups (the music just skips a couple of beats, and sometimes the music is played back at double speed (it sounds even faster then double speed)

Yesterday I've noodled around with the Buffers In Playback Queue setting. Now I'm running Homestudio with buffersize 6 and the latencyslider on 50ms. It seems to be OK. So far...

Do you know anything about the Buffers In Playback Queue, Ethan?
 
WDM

Pedullist,

> when pull the slider to 50ms, HomeStudio is starting to get very instable: I get hiccups ... <

I don't have XP so I don't know all the tweaks you can apply. Windows 98 needs a bunch of tweaks to get solid, glitch-free playback. Windows 2000 is the same - worse even, because of all the nonsense running the background that you have to disable.

> Do you know anything about the Buffers In Playback Queue <

Only what's described in the owner's manual. I just got Sonar a month ago, and I'm still getting up to speed.

--Ethan
 
WDM drivers?

Hi Ethan,

WindowsXP has a LOT of nonsense running in the background , indeed. So I've turned off all visual effects, hardware accelaration and combined writing.

Homestudio SEEMS to run a lot better. I'm going to test this for a week, we'll keep in touch...

--Ped--
 
I/O Daughterboard question to Ethan Winer

HI,Ethan Winer,and Pedullist;hope I´m not annoying anyone by asking this;
Could you please check a post with a question I´ve sent to you and went by (my own,I´m new here...) mistake into a wrong Forumm,
It´s on the Recording Computer Soundcard,under
-
------ I/O Daughterboard for...

THANKS A LOT.....
 
Orangegangster, just read your post. Don't know anything about that kinda stuff.

Sorry...
 
Pedullist,Thanks anyway my friend...I´ll wait and see if Ethan Winer read my post,I went into his own site,I think he can teel me something on that subject,if he wants to,he seems to be a "Pro" on this stuff....
 
Re: I/O Daughterboard question to Ethan Winer

og,

> Could you please check a post with a question I´ve sent to you <

I honestly don't know if that Hoontech card works with an Audigy. Do they say it works with an Audigy, or only an SB Live? Unless they mention Audigy specifically, I'd play it safe and get the genuine Creative version.

I will say this: Sometimes folks get too wrapped up in the need to keep everything digital (or 24 bits, or 96 KHz...). In truth, you won't get much degradation from one extra digital to analog conversion. I mean, it's like an extra 0.01% distortion. Hardly the biggest limiting factor in the overall quality of your recordings.

--Ethan
 
Re: Re: I/O Daughterboard question to Ethan Winer

Ethan Winer said:
og,

I will say this: Sometimes folks get too wrapped up in the need to keep everything digital (or 24 bits, or 96 KHz...). In truth, you won't get much degradation from one extra digital to analog conversion. I mean, it's like an extra 0.01% distortion. Hardly the biggest limiting factor in the overall quality of your recordings.

--Ethan
Click to expand...

Spot on, Ethan!
 
Audigy Player-x-Live!Ware1024

Thanks for helping,Ethan,Pedullist,...
About the I/O board;both on Hoontechs and on "Live! Center",site they say it does apply to the new Audigy series,but as this new Audigy-Player seems to be too new on the market to make a final judge on it´s roll,I think I´ll stick to my older 1024 for now and maybe change latter on as soon as theres some good feedback about it.
All my recording set up is more or less "Tunned" now,so better play safe for now..
So went to the shop and trade it back into a Sony-cd-rw1611!

Also thanks for that tecnical tip about analog/digital line-out´s performance,I really though it was way noisyer for the analog send/receive outputs.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top